New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy moved the Supreme Court on Monday in an appeal against the dismissal of a probe to investigate the alleged murder of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s wife, Sunanda Pushkar.

A bench comprising justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy said they would have to be satisfied on the maintainability of the petition before they could start hearing the case on merits.

“You will have to tell us about the status of the police investigation and whether the plea is maintainable," said justice Amitava Roy.

The court adjourned the matter for three weeks thereafter.

On 26 October, the Delhi high court had dismissed Swamy’s plea on grounds that it was perhaps a textbook example of political interest litigation being dressed up as a public interest litigation.

Swamy had moved the Delhi high court in July last year seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)-monitored SIT (Special Investigation Team) investigation into the alleged murder of Sunanda Pushkar, who was found dead in a south Delhi hotel room in 2014 in mysterious circumstances.

The petition had alleged that Tharoor, along with fellow Congress leader and former Union health minister and leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, tried to “mislead" the investigators, and pressurise the head of the forensic department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences to give a favourable autopsy report.

It also claimed that the investigators influenced the investigation, deliberately “causing inordinate delays".